Infojustice Blog by Carrie Sager Covered by Techdirt

A recent blog post by PIJIP Dean's Fellow Carrie Sager highlighting the distinctions between ACTA and the TPP has recently received coverage on TechDirt and BoingBoing. The articles refer to a chart, created by Carrie, which juxtaposes provisions from TPP Intellectual Property Chapter with the comparable sections of ACTA. TechDirt blogger Glyn Moody writes:

"ACTA and TPP have much in common. That's no coincidence, since they are both born of a common desire to move away from multilateral forums like WIPO that are relatively open to scrutiny, to invitation-only groups negotiating behind closed doors. That lack of transparency has allowed all kinds of extreme measures to be proposed without any countervailing arguments being heard about why they are neither fair nor sensible.

But in many ways, what's really interesting is how the two treaties differ, because it's clear that in many places TPP goes well beyond ACTA -- it's not simply a transposition of ACTA to the Pacific Rim. As such, those differences represent the next turn of the copyright enforcement screw, and give us a fascinating insight into where the copyright maximalists are likely to be pushing for more when it comes to drawing up successors to ACTA and SOPA, say.

That fact makes some recent work by Carrie Ellen Sager particularly useful. She has prepared a detailed comparison of the US proposal for a TPP Chapter on IP (the only information we have on TPP so far) with the relevant sections of ACTA. There are two versions: a full comparison table (pdf) and one with the highlights (pdf). In what follows, I'll be quoting from the latter..."